Role-playing gaming (RPGing) has its roots as far back as ancient history with the development of war-gaming. War-gaming is the simulation of combat strategies and tactics represented in reduced scale with various rules, often with some sort of randomizing agent such as dice or cards to add an element of “realistic” unpredictability. As long as there has been organized warfare, there appears to have been some form of war-gaming in every culture throughout history. Chess and the Chinese game Go both are very much based on war-gaming, but considered lacking by some because of the lack of unpredictability offered by “true” war-gaming using some degree of randomization.
The RPG Research Project Document ID #RPGR-A001-A-20120927A-CC

This is an analysis of the report "ALIENATION AND THE GAME DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS" by Lisa A. Derenard and Linda Mannik Kline. Psychological Report, 1990, 66, 1219-1222. O Psychological Reports 1990. The Analysis and commentary on the report is written by W.A. Hawkes-Robinson.

It has been a VERY busy 10 months. we have spoken at many conventions/conferences, sat on panels, provided presentations, been in live Q&A chat session, and had many interviews. All about the effects of role-playing games, and their use to achieve therapeutic and educational goals for many different populations. Here is a listing of all these in one location for your convenience...

Originally written in 2004, and periodically tweaked over the years. After decades of using RPGs in educational settings, this was the paper that started the therapeutic focus and building of the RPG Research website. There are very few social table-top recreation activities available that are cooperative rather than competitive in nature. Role playing gaming is by design a cooperative past time, which in and of itself may have significant benefits in the world where everything is becoming competitive at all ages and levels of society...

Wonderful news, I just received an email today confirming they wish for me to proceed with writing the entire chapter on using role-playing games as a facilitation technique for therapeutic recreation!

Due to excessively strict NDA of the organization, I am very limited in what I can post, but letting those following the RPG Research, beginning working with autism-spectrum toddlers today from a recreation therapy approach, and developing an activity program that is LARP (Live-Action Role-Playing) quest-style for this population group, that we will actually implement in the next few weeks.

An article on Killscreen.com, "DUNGEONS OF THE MIND: TABLETOP RPGS AS SOCIAL THERAPY" by Chris Berg was just published. It includes a range of RPG researchers and therapists from a variety of disciplines including: drama therapy, family therapy, sociology, recreation therapy / therapeutic recreation, and more!

The arguments about "Escapism" often recur, and I recently saw someone posting about it again. This topic is addressed in the presentations at Washington State and Pacific Northwest American Therapeutic Recreation Association Conferences, so here is a snippet on the topic...

This is an early prototype version. There are newer, more complete and updated, versions created since this article was posted years ago. This is useful for various populations and professionals from other disciplines wishing to teach participants how to find and use civic resources (police, fire department, doctor, hospital, theater, etc.). This program is based on work at Eastern Washington University with oversight by Professor Emily Messina and others. It has been repeated with similar success when used other groups in private practice through non-profit RPG Research and the for-profit RPG Therapeutics LLC since.

Many/most game master progress through a series of GM styles. There are many archetypes (or stereotypes) of various kinds of Game Masters / Dungeon Masters. Some are inevitable stages of learning that new GM's are likely to go through, others are GM styles that some GM's just can't seem to stop repeating. Feel free to suggest others to include in this list.